Fleetingly
by selenia-sopheria
Summary: He was always one step ahead of her. Blackquill/Athena — for GyakutenSaibanx3


_a belated birthday fic for Michelle_

* * *

Simon Blackquill on the witness stand is a collected puppet, made to dance by the courtroom's strings—every smile stitched, every confession tortured, every cool stance pricked. "Murderer," they whisper. "Monster," some say. Any objection Athena directs back comes in the form of strangled, quiet tears. Had he no heartbeat, she might fall for the ruse that is her mother's killer, where even the sharpest of verbal blows fails to leave a dent on his rigidity.

Simon in Athena's heart is a cacophony of pleas and truth and screams that chokes their blood cold, wrings their necks and bones continuously and contiguously until it kills him, kills him to the point where his heart is chained out of her grasp and kills her until she is gasping for Simon and air, leaves her alive enough for her to hunger, for blood to feed his black heart and for spare pints to splatter amongst the courtroom's faux-white banners

_because he didn't do it his heart is screaming he didn't_

But the judge's gavel rings in her ears and it is always louder than her voice. In exchange for her amplified sensitivity, she is quiet as silence.

She stares at Simon's wrist, longing to grasp it, aching to see a shiver or a twitch against the cold metal binds to assure herself that he is against the world, with her. But he does not budge.

As he is led away, she is cuffed to the ground by bursts of relief and condemnation that belong to everyone but her, and in the delirium of emotional output by the villains that surround her she falls, unable to distinguish between their hearts and her own.

Thereafter, she paints the courtroom red.

* * *

For once, it's a relief to see Simon afresh in the courtroom. Her heart sprinted as she spoke about him to Apollo, a mingling of vim and nerves tingling her voice. Now he stands across from her—a long, long distance away—never yet meeting her eyes. This mildly agitates her, but she struggles to appear reserved, determined to convince him she is mature, pink, alive.

Suddenly she sees it: a chance. Jinxie Tenma's distress bolsters her dynamism. Apollo's squirming feeds her vigor. And then, the voice that could not cry seven years ago finds its mettle.

"Hold it!"

The weight of the world plunges onto her shoulders. Yeah she continues, with a clasp on her hip and her nose in the air.

"Your Honor! I believe her memory is simply clouded by fear!"

Athena details her request for a therapy session ("With the court's permission, of course") accompanied by a loud grin and an expectant eye on Simon, whose eyelids mask signs of receptivity. Her lower lip is jutted as she scrutinizes him, silencing the steady air about the courtroom, honing her hearing in preparation for the sounds that will leave his lips.

"Any objections, Prosecutor Blackquill?" asks the judge.

He is still—so still—for a very long time. It is daunting, the distance between them—literally and otherwise. For years, he has walked—ran—in the opposite direction, away from her and the past; but yesteryear's apparitions were omnipresent, drinking out of their hearts. Even now, this remains unchanged. But they can block out its shrieks, together.

_Simon?_

When he opens his eyes and meets hers, she listens.

"Hmph. It makes no difference to me."

And she hears it.

_Hello, Athena._

She hears it, underneath the heavy layers of monotone and passivity: a spark. Acknowledgment.

A smirk overtakes Athena's features, bringing her lips to her eyes. As Widget assembles, she pounds moxie into her fist, Simon's tone of acceptance skimming her skin.

He has ran far, far away. But she has finally taken her first step.

And suddenly, the distance between them, if only by a trickle, has dwindled.

* * *

The lighter is white, but it doesn't deserve to be.

Athena sheds her fear of the courtroom for a flitting moment, if only to replace it with malice. She finds a cruel irony in the way she is led out, confronted by inflexible bailiffs and the mortification of the crowd, away from Mr. Wright and Simon, Simon—

She will remember the look on his face for a long time. It's a mask of pallor, thin-lipped and thick-skinned, the slope of his jaw attempting to be lax yet only managing to be rigid. Yet she can hear it.

The screech of his teeth tightening. The howl of his skin as his nails rip through. The throb of his pulse run rampant.

He is scared.

When Athena manages to tear herself away from his eyes, she realizes she is unable to hold him as she used to. Though she leaves the courthouse facing forward, her heart is behind, left to plead for a window to open, for one final, modest trace of sunlight.

And now she is the one forced to run away.

They visit her at the detention center. Mr. Wright tells her he will save her and Simon, in the interim a dangerous grip on his locket. Apollo speaks restrainedly, leaving her with raw sympathies and a curt nod. Juniper approaches the glass tearfully, and Athena feels obligated to quell her with a smile.

She cannot smile for him.

He passes her, in the period when they are being taken to their individual cells. She cannot face him. She cannot bear to see the fear in his eyes. But she knows she will hear it anyway.

Their arms brush, softly—so softly she wonders if she imagined it. Yet when he catches her eyes after compelling her, entrancing her to turn, she knows.

He is real. His breath is real, as it ghosts against her parted lips, warm and cool, wanting and requesting. She consents, equally parched—and she takes him. He tastes of yesteryear, of metal and musk-plume and a little of her mother; she tastes the brine as it trails down her closed eyes and glosses over her cheeks. She loses and finds herself in him. They part as ephemerally as they joined—the guards yanked them apart roughly—and it takes her a considerable amount of willpower to avoid capturing his lips once more.

Simon is unsmiling. Her mind says to him _It's okay, we'll be okay_, but her mouth does not. Her mouth does not tell lies.

* * *

On the gloaming of December 21, 2027, Athena closes her eyes.

Her thoughts wander purposefully, landing on him. Though the icy, rusted bed she sits upon is cold, Simon—even in idle thought—is warm.

They are in constellation-comatose, bloody stars radiating red across the black void—and the white, _white_ courtroom stands adjacent. Simon is there, back turned yet close, within her reach. She makes to step forward, but the edge to his voice cuts her foot short.

"You cannot follow me," he says. "Not here."

She weaves her words carefully. "Yes, I can. I—I _deserve_ to." She swallows, lowering her voice to a weak whisper. "I killed you."

His breaths are chillingly calm, so calm they crawl through her bones, make her shudder.

"Perhaps," he says simply. Then, he turns.

And she sees it.

Black and mute: his eyes. A screaming silence floods the air. The only sound: the imperceptible ache of her heartbeat and hers alone, eerily reminiscent of a heart monitor suspended in death, and the hush of the past's ghosts.

She wonders if he cried before his eyes were killed dry.

Athena cries then, cries for the both of them, gathers his limp, standing form in her arms, drowns her sobs on his stiff lips, longing to see an electric flare in his pallid eyes to inject antiarrhythmic drugs into his corpse to hang her thin arms around his nape and _lift him, lift him softly and silkily to safety…_

And his neck snaps.


End file.
